Capture a Part of the Screen

You’ll need to hit Cmd + Shift + 4 if you want to snap a specific portion of the screen. This shortcut turns the cursor into a crosshair; you can then click and drag it across the part of the screen you want to capture.

While making the selection, hold down the Shift key if you want to limit your adjustments to either the X or Y axis. If you’d like to resize your selection proportionally from the center, hold down the Option key. If you want to move the selection, hold down Space instead.

(Changed your mind about taking the screenshot? No problem. Hit the Escape key to cancel the action.)

Capture an Application Window

Want to take a screenshot of the active window? First hit Cmd + Shift + 4. Then hit Space, and you’ll see the crosshair turn into a camera.

The active window appears highlighted, and if you click the camera, you get a screenshot of the window. Before clicking, you can also choose to move the focus of the camera to a different window.

If you want to take a timed screenshot, you’ll need to open your Mac’s built-in screenshot utility. We’ll discuss it in the next section.

How to Take Screenshots on Mac With the Screenshot App

Under Applications > Utilities, you’ll find your Mac’s stock screen capture app, aptly named Screenshot. You can also bring up this app with the shortcut Cmd + Shift + 5.

(If you’re on a pre-Mojave Mac, look for the Grab app instead of Screenshot in the Utilities folder.)

With Screenshot, Apple has simplified the whole screen capture process. The app is useful if you prefer a more point-and-click approach over keyboard shortcuts.

Screenshot’s toolbar has three buttons that make screen capture quick and painless: Capture Entire Screen, Capture Selected Window, and Capture Selected Portion. (The app also has a couple of buttons for screen recording.)

For timed selections, click on the Options button in the toolbar. You’ll find the timer options in the menu that shows up.

After you take a screenshot, you’ll see a tiny thumbnail of it at the bottom-right of the screen. It leads to a special window with tools for editing and annotating your screenshots. They let you add text, sketches, shapes, and even your signature to a screenshot. This Markup utility is one of the best new features of macOS Mojave.

If you want to turn off the thumbnail feature, uncheck the Show Floating Thumbnail item in the Options menu from the screenshot toolbar.

Configuring Screenshot Settings on Mac

You might want to, say, change the default screenshot format or change where screenshots get saved. In such cases, you’ll need to execute a command from the Terminal app. Let’s take a look at three of the most handy commands.

We have appended each command with a second one that’s needed to cement the changes. It reads:

killall SystemUIServer

To Change the Default Screenshot Format

You can save screenshots to other formats like JPG, BMP, and PDF. You’ll need to replace [file type] in the command below with the relevant three-letter format name.

To Change Where Screenshots Get Saved

In macOS Mojave, you can change the default destination folder directly from the Screenshot app. To do this, click on the Options button in the screenshot toolbar and select a folder of your choice under the Save To section of the consequent menu.

The advantage of using Preview for screenshots is that you can specify a different file format and save location with each new capture. Of course, you can also instantly edit the screenshot in Preview before saving it.

You’ll find the screenshot tools in Preview under File > Take Screenshot. Unfortunately, a timed screenshot option is missing here.

The Best Screenshot Apps for macOS

Want advanced features that aren’t included in one of the native screen capture tools? Try one of the three third-party tools below.

1. Monosnap

This app sits in your Mac’s menu bar and you can access it with a keyboard shortcut. Monosnap lets you edit screenshots and add arrows, boxes, and text to them. You can also blur elements, highlight specific areas, and upload screenshots to the cloud. Monosnap made it to our list of the top Mac menu bar apps.

2. Skitch

3. Snappy

Get Snappy if your work involves collaborating on screenshots or “snaps” often. You can not only edit and annotate screenshots as usual, but also share them with ease. The sharing options include a password-protection feature and a self-destruct timer.

Extra useful tips and commands, thanks for publishing them. Now if someone just could tell me how I can paste a screen shot or a capture of a screen section into Word, i'd be ecstatic. I have the images on the clipboard, I can paste them into Mail but not into Word (it just pastes the name of the .png file)....

I could never understood why Apple is making everything so hard to figure out when it is supposed to be a very user friendly environment. It is not. Having to press 3 or 4 or 5 keys at the same time to accomplish something is ludicrous. I used to be a Windows user and while that environment is not by any means perfect, it used to so much simpler to use. Drop down menus with clear selection options instead of hidden symbols and very obscure ways of doing things that require one to keep looking for how to do things.

I actually just built up a Windows computer, and I think the Mac screenshot keys are way better than the Snipping Tool. I actually found an app that lets me use the Mac shortcuts on Windows, and it's a lot more efficient!

Akshata trained in manual testing, animation, and UX design before focusing on technology and writing. This brought together two of her favorite activities — making sense of systems and simplifying jargon. At MakeUseOf, Akshata writes about making the best of your Apple devices.